How to build the psychological safety that drives high performance
This article was originally published in Chief Executive here.
You need your team to give their best effort—but they won't deliver if they're living in a culture of fear. As CEO, you can help break that cycle.
Imagine this scenario: One of your employees comes to you, frustrated with a colleague who seems to be blocking their intention to embark on a new project.What do you do? How you manage these kinds of situations determines whether you create a psychologically safe environment that allows your employees to thrive.A two-year study of team performance at Google found that teams that allow employees to take risks without feeling insecure or embarrassed are consistently the highest-performing. That’s because employees can say or do what they know is really needed without worrying about others’ responses or getting negative feedback from the boss.Psychological safety relies on trust: Employees need the security of knowing that others won’t think less of them if they say what they think, make a mistake, or share a crazy idea. As CEO, you play a central role: Studies consistently find that empathetic leaders more effectively create trusting relationships that translate into higher employee satisfaction and performance. Conversely, leaders who don’t relate to their teams often struggle to motivate employees.If you can help others become more empathetic and open to the thoughts and ideas of people who are different from them, you will go a long way toward building psychological safety and, as a result, a high-performing organization.
Lead From a Place of Understanding
So how should this situation be handled? According to data from tens of thousands of similar scenarios, one response has a disproportionate impact. Teaching this response to your senior leadership and encouraging them to do the same with their teams will create a long-term impact and help drive your business:1. See: Get in other people’s shoes. When facing a situation like the one at the beginning of the article, the first challenge is helping your employee get into the other person’s shoes. If employees are struggling to influence their teams, it may be that their own judgments and experiences are getting in the way of understanding others’ perspectives. Help employees create trust, safety and connection by putting themselves in their colleagues’ shoes and seeing the world through their colleagues’ eyes. Letting go of preconceived notions and embracing other people’s perspectives creates empathy.2. Hear: Ensure others feel heard. The foundation of psychological safety is ensuring that the other person feels heard. Once you have helped the employee see the world from the other person’s perspective, the next step is helping them think about how to let the other party feel heard. Guide your employee toward listening with an open heart and reflecting what they hear. When people feel heard, they can more readily empathize with each other and make space for the other’s perspective. True listening creates a psychologically safe space for even difficult conversations. CEOs should model this style of empathetic listening with their direct reports.3. Connect: Speak to their needs. Once your employee has truly seen and heard their colleague’s perspective and ideas, they can share what is important to them in a way that aligns with the team’s needs. Your employee can show empathy and understanding by addressing the team’s concerns when they respond. If your employee has watched and listened with empathy, the message will be more compelling.The most high-impact conversations always follow this sequence. First, see the other person, then make them feel heard, then speak to their needs. Coaching employees to do this—and developing their empathy skills in the process—will create the atmosphere of psychological safety that businesses need to reach their full potential. When individuals and groups feel secure, they will uncover new insights and become truly innovative on all levels.
Related content
Related content
From top-down to judgment all around: The AI imperative for organizations
Each business revolution has reshaped not only how businesses operate, but how they organize themselves and empower their people. From the industrial age to the information era, and now into the age of artificial intelligence, technology has always brought with it a reconfiguration of authority, capability, and judgment.
In the 19th century, industrialization centralized work and knowledge. The factory system required hierarchical structures where strategy, information, and decision-making were concentrated at the top. Managers at the apex made tradeoffs for the greater good of the enterprise because they were the only ones with access to the full picture.
Then came the information economy. With it came the distribution of information and a need for more agile, team-based structures. Cross-functional collaboration and customer proximity became competitive necessities. Organizations flattened, experimented with matrix models, and pushed decision-making closer to where problems were being solved. What had once been the purview of a select few, judgment, strategic tradeoffs, and insight became expected competencies for managers and team leads across the enterprise.
Now, AI is changing the game again. But this time, it’s not just about access to data. It’s about access to intelligence.
Generative AI democratizes access not only to information, but to intelligent output. That shifts the burden for humans from producing insights to evaluating them. Judgment, which was long the domain of a few executives, must now become a baseline competency for the many across the organization.
But here’s the paradox: while AI extends our capacity for intelligence, discernment, the human ability to weigh context, values, and consequence, is still best left in the hands of human leaders. As organizations begin to automate early-career work, they may inadvertently erase the very pathways and opportunities by which judgment was built.
Why judgment matters more than ever
Deloitte’s 2023 Human Capital Trends survey found that 85% of leaders believe independent decision-making is more important than ever, but only 26% say they’re ready to support it. That shortfall threatens to neutralize the very productivity gains AI promises.
If employees can’t question, challenge, or contextualize AI’s output, then intelligent tools become dangerous shortcuts. The organization stalls, not from a lack of answers, but from a lack of sense-making.
What organizations must do
To stay competitive, organizations must shift from simply adopting AI to designing AI-aware ways of working:
- Build new learning paths for judgment development. As AI replaces easily systematized tasks, companies must replace lost learning experiences with mentorship, simulations, and intentional development planning.
- Design workflows that require human input. Treat AI as a co-pilot, not an autopilot. Embed review checkpoints and tradeoff discussions. Just as innovation processes have stage gates, so should AI analyses.
- Make judgment measurable. Assess and develop decision-making under ambiguity from entry-level roles onward. Research shows the best learning strategy for this is high-fidelity simulations.
- Start earlier. Leadership development must begin far earlier in career paths, because judgment, not just knowledge, is the new differentiator.
What’s emerging is not just a flatter hierarchy, but a more distributed sense of judgment responsibility. To thrive, organizations must prepare their people not to outthink AI, but to out-judge it.
BTS acquires Nexo to strengthen its position in Brazil and Latin America
P R E S S R E L E A S E
Stockholm, May 5, 2025
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN – BTS Group AB (publ), a leading global consultancy specializing in strategy execution, change, and people development, has agreed to acquire Nexo Pesquisa e Consultoria Ltda., Nexo, a boutique consulting firm headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil.
Nexo has been growing continuously since it was founded in 2017. With revenues of approximately 12 million Brazilian Reales (approx. 2.1 million USD) in 2024, and a highly capable team of 21 members, Nexo has built a strong reputation for delivering transformative projects in strategy, innovation, leadership, and culture.
Nexo collaborates with a great portfolio of clients across sectors such as financial services, consumer goods, and technology, assisting both local and global companies in navigating uncertainty, unlocking creativity, and activating strategy through people. Their work encompasses culture transformation, leadership development, employer value proposition, innovation culture, and vision alignment – supported by proprietary methodologies and frameworks.
BTS currently operates in Brazil servicing both local and multinational clients with a team of 13 employees. By acquiring Nexo, BTS not only increases the Group’s footprint in Brazil but also adds significant capabilities in culture and transformation services. Nexo’s client base has limited overlap with BTS, creating strong growth potential and synergy opportunities.
“Nexo is known for helping leaders and organizations tackle some of the most complex, human-centered challenges with creativity, empathy, and strategic clarity and the Nexo team is loved by their clients,” says Philios Andreou, Deputy CEO of BTS Group and President of the Other Markets Unit. “Their products and services complement and elevate our existing offerings, especially in culture transformation, and we are thrilled to welcome the Nexo team to BTS.”
“We’re excited to join BTS. We’ve long admired BTS’s approach and unique portfolio to support large organizations and leaders in connecting strategy with culture across the organization,” says Andreas Auerbach, co founder of Nexo. “Becoming part of BTS, allows us to scale our impact and bring more value to our clients while staying true to our values and culture,” adds Mariana Lage Andrade, co-founder of Nexo.
Upon completion of the transaction, Nexo’s business and organization will merge with BTS Brazil. Nexo’s founders will assume senior management roles in the joint operation.
The acquisition includes a limited initial cash consideration. Additional purchase price considerations will be paid between 2026 and 2028, provided Nexo meets specific performance targets. A limited portion of any such additional purchase price considerations will be paid in newly issued BTS shares. The transaction is effective immediately.
BTS’s acquisition strategy continues to focus on broadening our service portfolio, expanding our geographic reach, and enhancing our capabilities to support future organic growth in a fragmented market.
For more information, please contact:
Philios Andreou
Deputy CEO
BTS Group AB
philios.andreou@bts.com
Michael Wallin
Head of investor relations
BTS Group AB
michael.wallin@bts.com
+46-8-587 070 02
+46-708-78 80 19
High-performing teaming
Work today is too complex for individuals to succeed in isolation. Almost every critical decision, innovation, or transformation depends on teams working effectively together. Leaders rely on their teams to deliver results. Teams, in turn, rely on their leaders to create the conditions where performance is possible. This exchange, what leaders need from their teams, and what teams need from their leaders, sits at the heart of what we call teaming.
When teaming is strong, leaders get what they need from their teams [creativity, resilience, execution] and teams get what they need from leaders [direction, support, and the conditions to thrive]. It’s how strategy becomes action, how uncertainty becomes opportunity, and how businesses stay competitive in a fast-changing world.